


Blood and Roses

by KMDWriterGrl



Category: Profiler (TV 1996)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:49:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29263806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KMDWriterGrl/pseuds/KMDWriterGrl
Summary: After a narrow escape from Jack in the morgue one morning, Grace takes stock of the situation with their resident serial killer. Post THTJB. This also takes place after my story "Acid and Knives."
Relationships: Grace Alvarez/Bailey Malone, Grace Alvarez/George Fraley
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1
Collections: Red Roses Challenge





	Blood and Roses

**Author's Note:**

> A/N 1: This takes place after “The House That Jack Built” and “Shadow of Angels 1 and 2” but before “Film at Eleven”, “Blue Highways”, and “FTX.” I also reference my own story “Aftershocks” for a piece of Grace’s personal history … the death of her friend and partner in a bombing in Miami. (In the show she says he was a victim of the bombing at the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, but I didn’t want to use real life history). 
> 
> A/N 2: We never learn when Jack started corresponding with Sharon Lesher in prison, but it had to have been well before the events in “Primal Scream” (when he springs her from jail) in order to groom her and make her trust him. I wanted to play around with the idea of how Jack’s behavior toward Sam and the team would have started to change as he began corresponding with and then grooming Sharon.

The light in the morgue was low, so it took Grace a moment to figure out whether it was blood or rose petals on the floor.

It was the floral scent that offered the answer, but that wasn’t reassuring. Rose petals were Jack’s signature and finding them scattered on the floor in the morgue could only mean that Jack had somehow found his way into the building.

Grace’s heart was hammering so hard that it felt like her whole body was vibrating. She didn’t wear her firearm unless they were going out in the field—and sometimes not even then—but she would have given anything to have it now. 

She slid her hand into her right pocket and found the reassuring weight of the Kershaw tactical knife that George had given her a month ago. She pulled it and let her thumb rest on the button that would send the four-inch blade snicking out of the haft.

Grace crept forward slowly, senses on high alert, scanning the room for any sign of movement. The light was too low to see. She groped for the dimmer switch, couldn’t find it by touch alone. Not wanting to take her eyes off the shadowy room, she kept feeling for it with her fingertips.

She contemplated backing out of the doorway and going into the Command Center to find one of the guys, but knew she’d never hear the end of it from John or Nathan if she dragged them down to the morgue because she was afraid of going inside it in the dark.

“You’ve got a pretty good reason not to go inside the morgue in the dark,” she reminded herself. “The rose petals on the floor should convince you of that.”

Was that a noise from inside the darkened room?

She froze, tense, waiting.

Was that someone breathing?

Oh god. It was.

Someone was in the morgue, waiting just out of her line of sight. She could hear indrawn breaths, then exhaled ones.

And the scent of roses was getting stronger.

She tensed, hand rigid around the knife, ready to flee.

A hand touched her shoulder.

Adrenaline flooded her system and she spun, ran right into whoever was standing behind her. 

Grace balled her hands into fists, the knife dropping to the floor with a clatter. She swung out, connected, heard a startled cry.

“Whoa, Grace! It’s me! It’s me!”

John’s voice. She recognized it instantly and stopped herself from swinging a second time, though just barely.

“John!” Her heart was pounding furiously. “He’s here.”

“Who is?” He raised a hand to his cheek. “Damn, Grace, what’s the big idea--”

“Jack. He’s here. Right now. He’s in the morgue.”

John lunged for the panic button next to the fire alarm, then pulled his gun and ducked inside the door before Grace could stop him. The thunder of running feet came within seconds in response to the alarm; Bailey with another agent in tow.

“Grace, what happened?” Bailey demanded.

“Jack’s in the morgue. John went in after him.”

Bailey immediately put himself between her and the doorway. “Stay here,” he ordered, drawing his gun.

“Bailey, don’t! Please.”

He held up a fending hand. “John?” he yelled in the door. “Are you clear?”

“Yeah, we’re clear,” John called back. “But you need to take a look at this, Bailey.”

“What have you got?”

“It’s …” John’s voice trailed off. “You really just need to see it.”

Bailey exchanged looks with Grace. He didn’t holster his gun.

“Stay here,” he repeated.

“No way.”

“We don’t know that Jack isn’t in there holding John at gun or knife point to lure us in,” he said softly. “I need you here. I need you safe.”

Her pulse still hadn’t come down and it started racing again at his words. She nodded.

“I’m coming in, John,” Bailey called. He gestured for the other agent to come with him and ducked in the doorway.

The lights came on, revealing the drifts of rose petals on the floor. The heavy floral scent made her want to gag.

She waited, gripping the edge of the door frame, until Bailey stepped out of the doorway to the exam room and gestured for her to come inside.

Grace picked up the Kershaw knife from where she’d dropped it and hit the button to spring the blade. She crept forward, knife at the ready. Bailey noted it and said, “You won’t need it. He’s gone.”

“Are you sure?”

“Take a look.” He nodded up at the loose ceiling tile… Jack had stood on her exam table, pushed aside the tile, and boosted himself up into the darkness of the ceiling. “We’ll check the duct work, but I’m pretty sure he’s gone. He never stays long in one place.”

Bailey directed her attention to the second table in the room, where a body bag rested in another drift of rose petals. A sign in Jack’s distinctive handwriting was attached to it. TO THE VCTF the tag read.

“Where’s your black light, Grace?”

“I’ll get it.”

Still feeling as though her body was working independently of her consciousness, she retrieved the black light from the main room. She switched it on, flipped the lights, and joined Bailey and John beside the body bag. She waved the black light over it until it fluoresced.

“He left us a poem,” John said, leaning in closer to read it. “’Roses are red. Black lights glow blue. Do you miss me, Samantha? I sure don’t miss you.’ Well, that’s quite a change.”

“We need to document this,” Bailey said. “Before we open that body bag.” He picked up the wall phone. “George, I need you in the morgue with a still camera and a video camera.” He glanced around the room. “Anything out of place or missing, Grace?”

She looked around, trying to calm down so that she could make note of anything out of the ordinary … besides the ceiling tile, the body bag, and the spill of rose petals. Bailey laid a hand on her shoulder. “Take your time.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ll need to check the outer office and all the equipment to really be sure but so far everything looks normal.”

George came into the morgue with the requested cameras. He looked tense. “What’s going on?”

“Jack paid us a little visit. We need all of this documented.”

George shot her a startled look. “Were you in here? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

She wasn’t; her pulse still felt like it was beating in her temples.

“I wasn’t in here.”

George looked like he wanted to put his arms around her, but clearly it wasn’t the time. He turned on the video camera and passed it to John while he began taking still photos with the lights on, then with the lights off to capture the black light message.

“What does he mean by that?” George asked after making sure to get the message from all angles. “Jack always misses Sam.”

“Maybe he’s fixated on someone new,” Grace offered.

“Could be,” Bailey said noncommittally. “I doubt it, though. Sam is the center of Jack’s universe. I don’t see him giving her up for anything less than someone else he deems worthy of him.” He stepped toward the body bag. “Let’s see who he’s left us.”

“I’ll do it.” Grace stopped him. “I’m the M.E., it’s my job.”

“Grace, you don’t know what else might be in that body bag,” John cautioned. “Knowing Jack there’s some nasty surprise in there.”

“I know. But it’s still my job. And he isn’t going to frighten me into not doing it.” She looked at the men. “Step back, all three of you.”

She waited until all of them had moved away from the autopsy table before pulling on a pair of gloves and reaching for the zipper. Her hands were shaking. She steadied them, then grabbed the zipper and pulled it down in one smooth motion. She ducked her head in case anything should come exploding out of the bag; she noted out of the corner of her eye that the guys were all doing the same thing.

Nothing happened. It was just a body in the body bag … at least as far as she could tell.

The guys stepped back again to surround her. She unzipped the bag all the way and spread its sides apart, feeling for any little traps that Jack might have placed in there.

“Careful,” George cautioned.

“We should have X-rayed it first,” Grace said. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s fine,” Bailey assured her. He leaned in closer and she held up a hand to motion him to back off a little.

“Female. Mid 30s. Blonde.”

“Like Sam,” George murmured.

Grace didn’t want to face the implications of that, so she didn’t respond.

“One of you put on some gloves and help me get her out of this,” she ordered.

Bailey was the only one without a camera, so he was the one who snapped on the gloves.

“I’m going to get her under the arms and lift her upper body. You grab the bag from your end and pull it clear.”

“Got it.”

“On three.”

Once the body was clear of the body bag, they could see the resemblance to Sam even more clearly. She was similar in height, size, and coloring … an almost uncanny resemblance to their colleague and friend. She saw a shudder move through the normally unflappable Bailey as he studied the body.

“He disfigured her face,” John said, pointing toward hundreds of tiny cuts all over it. “Jesus, I hope she wasn’t alive for that.”

“The death of 1000 cuts,” George said, leaning in close to get still photos. “It’s supposed to be excruciating.”

“Is he saying this is what he wants to do to Sam?” John asked.

“This is rage,” Bailey said thoughtfully. “But Jack doesn’t do rage. He’s planned, he’s controlled, he’s thoughtful. This is none of those things.”

“But the way he brought her to us doesn’t demonstrate rage,” Grace put in. “He set it up for us, just like he always does. He laid her out like a present I was supposed to find.”

“He was decompensating when he killed this woman,” Bailey said. “He plotted and planned to find a woman who looked like Sam but when he found her and took her, he lost control. He couldn’t resist inflicting real torture on her. But once he was done, he was back to careful and controlled. He planned to bring her here and put her where he knew you’d find her. It’s like you were saying a few weeks ago, Grace … this is mixed presentation. Organized and disorganized. In control and out of it.”

Grace studied the raw skin on the woman’s face and felt acid rise in her throat. She swallowed it back down and took a deep breath, then another.

“Can you print her right now?”

“Of course.” It would help to do something normal. She crossed to the drawer where she kept her supplies and pulled out print cards and ink. 

Bailey looked at George. “When Grace gets prints, run them through IAFIS, see if there’s a hit.”

“You got it.”

He looked around the room one more time, ensuring that he had made note of everything that Jack had left behind.

“Stay on your guard, Grace. If anything seems out of the ordinary, go out in the hallway and hit the panic button.”

“We should wire one up and put it in here,” John put in. “We know Jack can get in and out of here now … it’s a good idea to have one nearby.”

“I’ll have one put in immediately.” Bailey studied her closely. “I’ll check on you later.”

“Thanks, Bail.”

John switched off the video camera. “I’ll take this back to the command center, watch it frame by frame. George, you coming?”

“In a minute.” He handed the still camera off to John. “Take this one too.”

“You got it.” John gave Grace a reassuring smile. “I’m down the hall if you need me, okay?”

“Thanks, John.”

John and Bailey left together, faces intense. George remained.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Grace blew out a shaking breath. “I just need some water. Or a Xanax.”

“Water I can do.” George crossed to the mini fridge where she kept her lunch and bottles of water and brought her one. “Was he here? Or did he just leave the body?”

“He was here,” Grace said. “I could hear him waiting. Breathing.”

“Thank god you didn’t go in.” He glanced around. “Where’s your gun?”

“In the gun safe.” She jerked her head toward the wall cabinet that concealed it. “I had my knife.” She pulled it out of her pocket. “I don’t go anywhere without it. Morgan looks at me like a lunatic.” She shook her head. “He’s going to lose his mind when I tell him about this.”

“This is one thing I wouldn’t share over the dinner table tonight.”

“No worries on that end. I think he and Rich are getting together to play poker with a few other guys.”

“That’s right, I’d forgotten.” George smiled. “I’m glad they’ve started hanging out. I hadn’t realized how lonely Rich was getting without me there.”

“Ditto.” She took a sip of her water. Her pulse was finally starting to come back toward normal. “I guess that means it’s you and me for dinner… assuming we’re not out on the hunt for Jack.”

“Sounds good to me.” He laid his hands on her tense shoulders and squeezed. “I’ll check in on you later.”

“Thanks, George.”

He gave her his trademark sweet smile and was out the door toward the Command Center, leaving her alone in the morgue.

***

The knowledge that Jack could get back into the morgue just as easily as he had gotten out of it kept Grace on her guard all day long. Despite the teams of agents sealing off ingress and egress points throughout the building and checking every inch of the ceiling tiles and ductwork, she couldn’t bring herself to believe that the building was completely secure, or that Jack was gone.

“He wouldn’t stick around,” Sam assured her, as she stared at the body of the woman who could have been her double. “He’s not going to risk a confrontation on our turf.”

She was being disconcertingly blasé about the entire thing, Grace thought with irritation. How could she be so cool?

“Jack likes a challenge though,” she argued. “That’s what you’ve always said.”

“He likes a challenge he can win. He can’t be sure of that against an entire building of federal agents. That’s why he separates us whenever he can … he wants us to be standing alone so he can take us down one by one. That’s why he attacked Nathan in his garage, and why he took a run at Morgan when he knew you weren’t at home.”

The image of her husband suspended upside down over a rapidly filling bathtub of water made her feel sick. She fought down a wave of nausea.

“You okay?” Sam asked, studying her. “You look a little green around the gills.”

“I’m okay.” Grace sipped from the bottle of water at her desk. “You were saying?”

“It’s good that you were on your guard, Grace. He was counting on you running on autopilot and walking into the morgue like it was any other morning. He didn’t factor in you noticing those rose petals.”

“Do you think he would have killed me?” Grace asked through numb lips.

“He doesn’t see you as a threat, not the way he sees Bailey and John. He’ll kill them if he can get his hands on them … he sees it as eliminating rivals for my affection. But you’re not a threat to him in that way, so, no, I don’t think he would have killed you. I think he might have hurt you, toyed with you like a cat will toy with a mouse, but that’s all.”

“That’s all.” Grace took a deep breath and tried to settle her stomach.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“All this stress is giving me heartburn,” she said, reaching in her desk drawer to pop some antacid.

“If you need to talk--”

Sam was about the last person Grace wanted to talk to about Jack, but the offer was kindly meant, so she bit back the angry retort that wanted to tumble out of her mouth. “Thanks. I’ve got to get this data into NCIC, okay? We’re building up a backlog of cases here.”

Sam knew it for the dismissal it was and rose to leave. “I’m around if you need me.”

***

She hated feeling so rattled. She didn’t want to turn on music as she sometimes did to help her concentrate … she was listening too hard for the sound of someone (Jack) in the exam room. Her stomach was roiling, her temples pounding. She didn’t want to turn her back to the exam room, nor did she want to turn it to the door, so she finally reoriented her desk so that her back was to the wall with the concealed gun safe right behind her in easy reach.

George took one look at her when he stopped by to see her at lunch and grabbed her jacket.

“Let’s go get some air.”

“I don’t need any air,” she protested.

“Oh yes, you do.”

They took the elevator to the rooftop helipad. It was a cool day and the wind was whipping, but it felt wonderful. Grace felt herself start to relax almost immediately.

“What’d I tell you?” George held her jacket and she slipped it on. “Fresh air does wonders. You’re a doctor … shouldn’t you know this?” He gestured her over to the benches several enterprising federal employees had put up near—but not too near—the edge of the roof overlooking the grassy lawn behind the FBI building.

Once she was settled on the bench, he moved in behind her and rubbed her shoulders, fingers that were so skilled on a keyboard working magic on the tense muscles that were causing her headache.

“God, George, how much do you charge by the hour?”

“You couldn’t afford me. I’m giving you the friends and family discount.” He gave her a teasing squeeze and went to work on her neck. “Try to relax.”

“I don’t know that I’m ever going to be able to relax again.”

“You will.” He worked his thumbs into the base of her skull, and she groaned rapturously. “It’s going to take a bit of time, but you will, both here and at home.”

“Oh? How’d you become so wise and Zen?”

“I probably wouldn’t be if I’d walked into what you did. But I’ve spent all day working on the security system here in the building and I’ve watched a team of agents crawl in and out of the ceiling. They’re going to make sure this is the last time Jack can breach our security.”

“And at home?”

“Bailey sent someone over to your place a few hours ago to make sure it’s secure. You’ve got panic buttons in every room of your house now, wired directly to the command center. The attic and basement are sealed off from the outside. Everything is locked down as tight as we can make it. Add all of that to your alarm system and you and Morgan should feel pretty safe.”

More than anything else that helped her relax. “Wow, you needed to let that go,” George marveled, kneading her shoulders with enough pressure to work the worst of the tension out. “That should help your headache.”

It did. Tremendously. She let herself slowly loosen up under his warm hands, so thankful for her best friend’s kindness and compassion.

“Sam came to see me in the morgue,” Grace said.

“Any new insights?”

“She said Jack likely doesn’t see me as a threat. Not the same way he sees Bailey and John as one.”

“I’d say that’s probably true. You’re not vying for her affection.”

“Why is he gunning for me, then?” The question had been beating in her brain ever since Sam said what she had.

“Because you’re integral to this team. More so than me or Nathan.”

“You’re--”

“I’m not offended. I’m actually thankful I seem to be on the periphery of Jack’s radar.”

“You’re crucial to this team,” Grace insisted, turning to look at him.

“A hacker is useful to have around,” George corrected. “But I’m no good in the field if I’m not in a surveillance van. I’m not trained the way the others are. I don’t know how I’d react if I ended up with a gun in my face.” He let his hands drop from her shoulders and came around to sit beside her on the bench.

“You got the same training at Quantico that I did.”

“I know that. But you’re entirely different. You’re fierce, Grace, in a way I never could be. You’re a fighter. You’ve told me what happened to your friend, Zane, back in Miami-Dade. You came through that intact. I don’t know that I would have. Jack might not see you as a threat for Sam’s affections, but he knows that if anyone is going to catch him using forensics, it’s going to be you.”

“I didn’t ask for this.”

“No one did.”

“I feel like I don’t have a right to be angry … after all, Sam’s the one whose husband he murdered … but I am. I’m so angry, George.”

“I know.” He laid a hand on the back of her neck and squeezed. “I can feel it in here. But Gracie, you’ve either got to let it go or let it fuel you.”

“I can’t let it go,” she said quietly. “Jack isn’t her fault … but none of us signed on for this. Neither did our families.”

“Things are a little tense with Morgan?”

“To say the least. How are you and Rich?”

“Not stellar. Not awful, but … he’s quiet recently. I worry that he’s reconsidering his options.”

“I worry about that too,” she admitted.

“You’ve been together since--”

“College.”

George whistled. “I can’t imagine staying with one person that long.”

Grace grinned at him. “You player.”

“Not a player. I just … like to keep my options open.” He sobered. “But I don’t want any option other than Rich right now. And I’m worried that … well, this thing with Jack isn’t good for anyone’s marriage.”

“You notice that no one else on this team is in a serious relationship … unless Bailey’s love of a bottle of scotch counts.”

“So, is it the job or is it them?”

“A little bit of both, probably,” Grace mused. “Sam and Coop seemed to have a little something going on … but who knows if that will stick. I think Bailey’s seeing someone, but he’s been secretive about who. And John goes through women like they’re going out of style.”

“Nathan?”

“I don’t know. He’s so closed mouthed that I couldn’t even begin to guess.”

The gossip with George was helping her relax, and she could see it was doing the same for him … until the door to the roof banged open and they both bolted upright, Grace reaching for her knife, George for his gun, which Grace hadn’t even realized he had on him.

“Just me,” John said hastily, holding up his hands. “I keep scaring you today.” He touched the side of his face; a bruise was starting to form where she’d hit him that morning.

“I’m so sorry,” she apologized, brushing it with her fingertips. “I thought you were--”

“Jack, I know. It’s okay. I’m glad to know you’ve got a hell of a right hook.” He noted the knife in her hand. “Feeling a little jumpy?”

“Wouldn’t you be if you’d found Jack in your office?”

“Hell yes, I would be.” He looked at George, who was holstering his gun. “You too?”

“Why aren’t you? Jumpy, I mean.”

“I just watched you beef up the security system, hot shot. I know we’re safe.” He studied them both. “You feel like getting in some practice? We’ve got this momentary lull… might as well use it.”

“Don’t you have dozens of reports to finish up?” George asked, starting to grin.

“I do. Which is why it’s the best time to go down to the range… so I can avoid all those reports.”

“Slacker,” Grace laughed.

“I’ll do them eventually,” he said. “Right now, I’d rather do this. You guys game?”

“Why not? I’ll stop by my office, grab my gun, and join you guys.”

“You want us to go with you?” George offered.

“No, it’s fine. I’ll meet you down there.”

She was half-expecting a gruesome surprise when she walked into the lab, but all was quiet, just as she had left it. She retrieved her gun from the gun safe and headed back to the elevator. Sam, Nathan, and Bailey were in the Command Center and glanced up at her as she passed by.

“Doing all right, Gracie?” Bailey asked.

“Yeah. George and I are going to put in a little range time with John.”

“He’s avoiding paperwork again, isn’t he?” Nathan asked, laughing.

“You said it, not me.”

“I might come down in a little bit, tear up some targets.”

“Sounds good. Sam? Bail? Do you want to join us?”

“Maybe later,” Bailey said, offering her a warm smile.

“No thanks, I’d rather get my paperwork done,” Sam replied vaguely. “We can’t all be like John.”

She’d never seen Sam shoot a gun, Grace noted a little sourly, because Sam hadn’t attended the month-long training course at Quantico with the rest of the team. It may have been because Sam had a child; Bailey’s teenaged daughters lived with his ex-wife in Baltimore, and the rest of them were childless. While they were running the Yellow Brick Road, taking defensive tactics and firearms courses, and working as a team to master the notoriously difficult Street Survival course, Sam had been back in Atlanta. Granted, Sam had graduated from the FBI Academy, but it still didn’t feel right to Grace that their lead profiler hadn’t participated in all the intense training required of the rest of the team.

“I’ll be in the range if you need me,” she said curtly, heading for the elevator.

The range was two levels below the parking garage, underground to blunt the noise from automatic weaponry. To reach it required stepping out into the parking garage, then taking a separate elevator down two levels.

Grace made idle note of her Lexus in the first row of the parking garage, snugged between George’s Saab and John’s Porsche. Bailey’s older BMW, Nathan’s Jeep, and Sam’s SUV (which she knew had bulletproof windows) were all lined up further down the row. The SUVs that the team took out to scenes and the surveillance vans were all parked against the far wall.

What was on her windshield? What was on ALL of their windshields?

Dear Lord.

She reached in her pocket, found her phone, and, praying for a signal in the concrete block that was the parking garage, dialed upstairs to the command center.

***

“Where’s my kit?” Grace asked Bailey as soon as he stepped out of the elevator with Sam and Nathan in tow.

“Right here. But put this on first.” He held the Kevlar vest for her while she pulled it on over her button-down shirt and drew the straps tight around her. “I’m probably being overly cautious, but I don’t want to take a chance that he might be luring us into an ambush.”

The elevator dinged again; John and George stepped out. Nathan handed them both Kevlar, which they immediately put on.

“Camera, Georgie?” Bailey asked.

“Ready to go.”

“Let’s take it slow here, people.”

Bailey took point, as always, with John behind him. Nathan came next in line, then George. Grace and Sam rolled their eyes at each other at the guy’s overprotectiveness, then fell into step behind the men.

Each VCTF team member’s car had a word scrawled on the windshield in blood, one word that made up the sentence:

_I do NOT miss you, Sam._

“He’s certainly screaming for attention,” Sam said, studying the message. The “not” was written in all caps with heavy underlining. It took up the entire windshield of John’s Porsche.

“Isn’t that all he ever does?” Nathan pointed out, peering at the “you” on his windshield. “Scream for attention in any way that will get us to notice?”

“That’s true. But look at what he’s saying— I do not miss you. He picked the most conspicuous way possible to announce that. If he doesn’t miss me, why take the time to come to my office, to scrawl it across our windshields? Why take the time to kill an innocent woman and leave her body where Grace would find it? It indicates the opposite; he does miss me. He wants my attention. It’s contrarian. It’s a spoiled boy screaming and stomping his feet and having a tantrum.”

“Is this because we found his lair? Made him run?” John asked.

“It’s partly about that … but I don’t think that’s all of it.” Sam bit her lip, studied the cars. “Grace, is this human blood?”

“I won’t know if it’s human or animal until I run a precipitin test. But let’s start by just confirming that it is blood, rather than paint.” Grace opened her kit and pulled out swabs. The liquid on Sam’s windshield was drying, but there were still tacky pools in some spots. She took a quick swab, dripped on some phenolphthalein, and watched the swab turn pink.

“It’s blood for sure. I’ll get samples from each car and get it back to the lab.”

As before, George shot still photos while John shot video. Bailey and Nathan made slow methodical circles around the cars, looking for any trace, no matter how small. Grace swabbed each car, labeled all the samples carefully, and then moved on to the next. 

It took a good 45 minutes to process the scene thoroughly, then another 30 to clean off the mess on their cars with buckets of sudsy water and squeegees.

John groaned. “All that detailing down the drain.” He pulled off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves to well past his elbows to avoid getting blood on his crisp white shirt.

“Yeah, I think a trip to the car wash is in order,” Nathan said, pouring a bucket of water over his windshield to rinse the last traces of blood off the glass. “Sam, want me to work on your car?”

“I’ve got it, Nathan, thanks.” Sam was at work with a wet rag, scrubbing with a will.

“Grace, you?”

For all that she was regularly up to her wrists in blood during autopsy, the blood on her windshield was making her feel queasy. She nodded gratefully. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all.” He began scrubbing.

She didn’t want to stand around doing nothing, so she gathered her swabs. “I’ll start processing this.”

Bailey looked up from his own car. “I’ll go up with you.” He addressed the group. “No one goes anywhere alone, understood?”

At their nods of assent, he gestured Grace to walk ahead of him into the elevator.

“You okay?” he asked when the doors had shut behind them and he’d swiped his badge to get the car moving. “You look a little rocky.”

“I must be coming down with something.”

“Are you sure that’s what it is?” He studied her intently.

“What else could it be?”

She was starting to get a suspicion of what it could be, considering the nausea she’d been fighting most of the day, but she tamped down on it hard, not wanting to consider it, not wanting the _hope_ of it.

“You look the same kind of pale my ex-wife looked before she found out she was pregnant.”

There it was, said aloud. Damn, Bailey was intuitive. That thought which had only been vaguely stirring in the very back of her mind was out front now, fully realized.

But she didn’t want to think about it, not after so many years of trying and failing. Thinking about it might jinx it and stop it from happening.

“I can’t have kids,” Grace said softly. “Every specialist I’ve been to has told me that over and over.”

“I can’t believe I’m about to quote from ‘Jurassic Park’ but life finds a way.”

Grace laughed, hoping to redirect the conversation. “I can’t believe you’ve _seen_ ‘Jurassic Park.’”

“I have a life outside the Bureau, you know. I also had a 13-year-old and a 14-year-old who absolutely insisted we go watch a movie about dinosaurs when it opened.”

He stepped out of the elevator, swiped his key card to get back into the VCTF, then followed her down the hall toward her lab. “Do you think--”

“I don’t want to think it,” she said. “I don’t even want to consider it.”

“Would it be such a bad thing?”

“It would be amazing. But I don’t want to get my hopes up…and certainly not Morgan’s. He would be devastated if I told him and then lost it.”

“So, don’t tell him. Wait until you’re sure.”

“This could just be indigestion. It could be the flu.”

“Or your gallbladder or appendicitis or vertigo,” Bailey teased. “But it could also be that you’re pregnant. In which case I want you to be careful about what you’re doing here in the lab. No moving bodies for example.”

“Don’t,” Grace said fiercely. “Don’t put strictures on me, Bailey. I’m perfectly capable of doing my job, whether I’m—no matter what shape I’m in.”

She couldn’t bring herself to say it, not yet … as silly as it was to even consider the concept of a jinx, she didn’t want to take any chances. 

“Noted, but--”

“No buts. If it turns out that’s what this is, you can’t start treating me differently. I won’t stand for it. I will keep doing my job the way I always have. I’ll go out in the field when it’s necessary. I’ll work right here in this lab up until the day I have the baby, understand?”

Bailey nodded. “Okay.”

“Promise me, Bail—no treating me differently.”

“I promise.”

“You know George is going to be massively overprotective … I don’t want it from you too. And I need you to keep this quiet. I don’t want the others knowing until I’m sure.”

“Absolutely. You have my word, Gracie.”

She took in a deep breath, blew it out, and found herself choking back a sob she hadn’t realized was there. Bailey drew her into his arms.

“It’s going to be fine.”

“What about Jack?” she asked, a horrible thought dawning on her. She stepped out of Bailey’s embrace so she could see his face as she asked the question.

“What about him?”

“Is this going to change the way—is there anything I should worry—I mean, what if he gets in the building and he--”

Bailey took a moment to really consider the question that she was stumbling over.

“Jack is a monster,” he said. “But he’s never injured or killed a child before. He let Chloe live the night she saw him at Tom and Sam’s house, and he let Donnie live when Donnie saw him at Papa Doc’s house. I don’t think Jack has it in him to hurt a child … and that includes an unborn baby.”

“How can you be sure?’

“Unfortunately, we can’t be sure. But based on his behavior so far, all 26 victims, he sticks to adult men and women who either know Sam--” He held up a fending hand so he could finish his sentence. “—Or with whom he can make a statement to Sam. But he has never shown himself to be so callous that he’d take that murderous impulse out on a child. I think in some ways Jack still feels like a child. Notice the way he attempted to get Sam’s attention today. I’ll bet that when we find Jack we’ll learn that he was neglected or abused as a child, which led to his desire to be heard and seen, to feel like a god, to control life and death.”

“This isn’t making me feel better, Bailey,” Grace said.

“I highly doubt that he would do anything to you, Grace. You said there was a minute in there when you could hear him breathing, waiting … he didn’t have to wait. He could have grabbed you and no one would have been the wiser. But he didn’t. You aren’t a threat to him.”

“That’s what everyone keeps saying.”

“If he’s got it out for anyone right now, it’s John, and that’s solely because John turned the dial on his jealousy up to ten. But just to be safe, I can keep you out of the field for a while, keep you busy with tests and lab work.”

“No one can know why,” Grace reiterated. “Not until I’m ready to tell them.”

“Not a word from me.”

“It might be the flu,” she said.

“It might be,” Bailey conceded with a sly smile. “But I hope it isn’t.” He touched her hand. “You’ll let me know when you find out.”

“Of course. You’ll be the first.”

“Morgan should be the first,” he corrected. “But I don’t mind being second.”

“Fair enough.” She moved over to her microscope. “They ever teach you how to do lab work at the Academy, Malone?”

“I must have slept through that course,” he said with a grin. “You want to teach me?”

“Absolutely.”

A faint smell of rose petals drifted up from the trash can, but Grace ignored it and began unpacking swabs. Her day had started with roses and ended in blood … precisely as Jack had intended.

END. Stay tuned for part 3!


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